"BOWEEAD" FISHING. 199 



received silently from the captain, of which I had pre- 

 viously known nothing, he became strangely calm. 

 In tones quite unlike his usual voice, he said that he 

 was not an American-born negro, but a pure African, 

 who had been enslaved in his infancy, with his mother, 

 somewhere in the " Hinterland " of Guinea. While still 

 a child, his mother escaped with him into Liberia, where 

 he had remained till her death. She was, according to 

 him, an Obeah woman of great power, venerated exceed- 

 ingly by her own people for her prophetic abilities. 

 Before her death, she had told him that he would die 

 suddenly, violently, in a struggle with a white man in 

 a far-ofif country, but that the whito man would die too 

 by his hand. She had also told him that he would be a 

 great traveller and hunter upon the sea. As he went on, 

 his speech became almost unintelligible, being mingled 

 with fragments of a language I had never heard before ; 

 moreover, he spoke as a man who is only half awake. 

 A strange terror got hold of me, for I began to think he 

 was going mad, and perhaps about to run a-mok, as the 

 Malays do when driven frantic by the infliction of real or 

 fancied wrongs. 



But he gradually returned to his old self, to my 

 great relief, and I ventured somewhat timidly to remind 

 him of the esteem in which he was held by all hands ; 

 even the skipper, I ventured to say, respected him, 

 although, from some detestable form of ill-humour, ho 

 had chosen to be so sneering and insulting towards him. 

 He shook his head sadly, and said, " My dear boy, 

 youse de only man aboard dis ship — wite man, dat is — 

 dat don't hate an' despise me becawse ob my colour, wich 

 I cain't he'p ; an' de God you beliebe in bless you fer dat. 

 As fer me, w'at I done tole you's true, 'n befo' bery 



